When Neverwinter Nights for PC released in 2002 I was really excited because I heard lots of great things about it. I bought it second hand off a friend and dug into the main story. Neverwinter Nights was a little long, but it offered a rich story that I found really interesting. By the end of the game I had a really epic Cleric that could kill nearly anything with a few spells. I enjoyed the Shadows of Undrentide expansion and really loved Hordes of the Underdark.

Recently watched the above Neverwinter Lore video and though it was worth sharing. You can play the Neverwinter MMO on Steam now or the entire 2002 Diamond Edition on GOG.com for $5.

http://www.gog.com/game/neverwinter_nights_diamond_edition
http://store.steampowered.com/app/109600/

SteamOS shipped last night and after it hit the net many people started analyzing it and trying to figure out more of the technical details. Valve has a really great SteamOS FAQ that outlines many of the details you should be aware of and i'll summarize some of the important ones.

• SteamOS is based on Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy using some Valve custom bits. Valve has added a nice mechanism to load games from SteamOS, its own packaging of graphic drivers and a customization to have the console auto-update.


• SteamOS seems to be require 64 bit processors.


• SteamOS contains a setting to drop out of Steam to the Gnome 3 Desktop. Gnome 3 is a full featured Linux desktop you can learn more about here: http://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/


• Valve has enabled easy access to gain root access on SteamOS. Basically this means you can customize it to do anything Linux can do.


• Right now SteamOS targets NVidia only, but there are drivers included for Intel and ATI.

I have been involved with Linux for many years and Valve's choices on what to ship with SteamOS are very exciting. Basing SteamOS on Debian Linux is a brilliant choice as it allows some awesome customization options for opening up your SteamOS to do nearly anything. I will be keeping my eye to how things advance to see guides on adding extra package repositories to SteamOS so you can setup your Steam Machine to run XBMC, VLC or act as a file server.

I have a mac-mini under my TV so I can watch web video and use VLC to play any movie file I throw at it. Now that SteamOS is basically a customized version of Debian, I can replace the mac. In a world where Sony can ship a console without mp3 playback or support for DLNA/UPnP, SteamOS will ship something you can hack to do practically anything you'd want a computer to do.

Valve shipped out the initial 300 Steam Machine beta machines and so far we are waiting for people to obtain them and report back. A few people in the beta are YouTuber's and I will let you know when they start talking about stuff.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/

If you want to download the backgrounds SteamOS ships with, you can download them here. I set the main one as my Linux desktop background, you know, for science.

http://repo.steampowered.com/steamos/pool/main/v/valve-wallpapers/

As an aside, I have been running Debian Wheezy for a few weeks as I recently switched from being a long time Ubuntu user. It's a great distro and at some point in 2014, I am looking to switch my primary Linux Desktop to SteamOS.

I have tons of digital files I have amassed over the years. I have 155 gigs of music I have acquired from ripping CD's, buying it online or getting stuff people release for free. I also collect PDF books, games, movies, digital pictures and a ton of other stuff I never want to lose. I take pride in that the majority of my digital collection is legit stuff I actually own. For many years I have been happy with how I access my stuff because I typically used to operate on only one computer. Everything lived in one place and life was great. That said, after University I started acquiring more devices and then managing all my files got a bit harder.

After I added a few more computers to the mix, I started treating one computer as the "canonical point" for all files and then I used various scripts to keep everything in sync over my network. A few years ago I picked up an iPhone and things started to get a bit hard to manage. It wasn't impossible, it just was tedious. I'd buy a new album, rip it, copy it to my Linux machine then sync it to my laptop and other computers. Then use iTunes to copy it to my phone. It was manageable but not fun.

A few months ago I decided to bite the bullet and look into buying something I have wanted for a few years now. I got a NAS. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and it's basically a hard disk you plug into your network that can serve up your files. After doing quite a bit of research I bought the 3TB Western Digital WDMyCloud.

First off, the WDMyCloud is awesome. At 3TB, I have more than enough disk to store my files. Once your music, movies and photos are on the device the MyCloud scans your files and serves them up over Windows & Apple filesharing + DLNA & UPnP. DLNA/UPnP are protocols many devices like the XBox 360 & PS3 can stream media over. Right now, I can browse through all my music and movies from the MyCloud on my PS3. Western Digital also has an app for the iPhone but you can use any generic DLNA/UPnP app as well.

One of the neat things about the MyCloud is that it lets you enable ssh by simply checking a box in the admin UI. Most devices don't allow this and to get ssh access you need to flash the device or hack it. The MyCloud lets you unlock it by default and it's pretty awesome as under the covers it runs Debian Wheezy(Linux). I have used this ssh access to turn the MyCloud into a local Linux server.

If you are looking for a way to consolidate your media for easy access, I recommend you check out the WDMyCloud. So far, I love using it and it has made sharing my files on my home network really simple.

http://is.gd/AAoHuM

War might not ever change, but sometimes the price of games change so much you must pick them up. GOG.com is launching its holiday sale with a bang and is releasing Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics free for a limited time.

Nab the games quick as your change to pick them up dries up in one day.

http://www.gog.com/promo/fallout_series_giveaway_winter_promo_2013

Where you are there, checkout the other awesome holiday sales on GOG.com games. Tis the season to spend like the end of the world is near.

http://www.dorkly.com/comic/57350/the-legend-of-zelda-a-break-between-worlds

Awesome Link comic I read on Dorkly today I wanted to share. Funny, sad and true all at the same time.

Don't walk away Link, you need to save Hyrule... again.

After the Starbound beta hit, like many of you, I played the heck out of it. Now that there have been a few game patches and people have tried out the beta, I wanted to ship a few questions over to our friend Curtis Schweitzer, who composed the game score. I was happy to hear that he was interested in talking with us about how things have gone since launch and what we can expect going forward.

jdodson: The Starbound beta has shipped and the reaction seems to be quite good. Right now, Starbound is the number 3 played game on Steam and all those people are listening to your music. How are you processing all of that right now?

Curtis Schweitzer: I'm just enjoying seeing how much people love the game! It is so fun to see this thing that you've been a part of for so long finally get released. Watching streamers figure out little tricks, or discover those little details that Tiy and his team have squirreled away in the hidden parts of the game is really delightful. And of course I'm enjoying seeing so many people liking the soundtrack too! :)

Whiteboyslim: Is there one track in particular that you are especially proud of?

Curtis Schweitzer: Of the new tracks, the Glitch racial theme is my favorite. It is really cinematic, and I was happy to see it get used for the first half of the game's trailer. Made me quite proud!

jdodson: Tim Morrison covered one of your songs “Atlas” on Ukulele and posted it to YouTube. Any fan requests to someone covering one of your songs in any specific way? Mira on flugelhorn perhaps?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjwyfcbKgQc

Curtis Schweitzer: I'd like to hear some piano arrangements of the existing orchestral tracks. My primary interest is piano, so I'd love to see what the fans can come up with. I'm sure it will be amazing!

jdodson: We last talked back in May, I wonder what has been happening in your world since we spoke last? Any new projects we should be looking forward to?

Curtis Schweitzer: I'm working on another game that I can't talk about (yet), but we should be launching a Kickstarter soon! And of course, I'm working on the "Seventh Spectrum" films (www.seventhspectrum.com) too!

jdodson: You are stranded on an alien planet. Strange and new things surround you! You can pick only 3 things to take from your previous life, what do you take? You are already outfitted with your trusty matter manipulator, wheat seeds and a small sword.

Curtis Schweitzer: Well, I'm going to start with that grappling hook. Man, that's awesome. But I supposed I'd also take one of bartwe's instruments, and maybe a hunting bow so that I can get some alien steak for dinner.

jdodson: The Starbound score is now available on Steam for purchase and contains a raft of game music, some of which you can’t hear in the game. Has there been any talk to add more music to Starbound and if so will the official Steam score be updated when this happens?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/268090/

Curtis Schweitzer: We don't have an "official" answer for this, but my inclination right now is to leave this soundtrack "as-is", and if we write more for the game, release it as a "Volume 2". At 5+ hours, I think the first set of music for Starbound is pretty complete.

Whiteboyslim: When we interviewed you back in May you said at the time you had around 5 hours worth of music written for the game. How many hours worth of music did you end up writing?

Curtis Schweitzer: Well, I lost a couple of cues because I was never really happy with them-- the Forest battle stuff always struck me as unbalanced, so I haven't put those on the soundtracks. (You can still hear them on my Soundcloud). The official soundtrack (including my stuff and Solatrus' stuff) is about 5 hours, 44 minutes. So we wrote almost another hour of new stuff, including new racial themes for the Apex, Florans, and some battle music.

jdodson: I want to thank you for taking the time to get back to me Curtis, anything you want to say as you bask in all the Starbound beta launch glory?

Curtis Schweitzer: Its been fun, and I'm looking forward to making new music in the future! I want to compose music as my primary living, and this is a big step toward getting there, so I'm excited what the future holds!

http://curtisschweitzer.com/

If you are interested, you can check out our interview with Curtis back in May:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1248

After hearing about "the most evil murder simulator ever made" and noticing the shareware version on the shelf for a few bucks, I gave Doom a shot. The graphics, immersion and gameplay blew my mind. The Demons snarling and grunting was really unnerving coming through my sound blaster. Shooting something and watching it explode was extremely satisfying. I also had fun connecting the game over BBS's and LAN for deathmatch.

Doom is one of those games that stamped my brain with what games could be and as such have a huge love for it. When Doom II came out I was very happy with the double barreled shotgun and new creepy levels.

I hope Doom continues to live on and wish iD Software godspeed on Doom 4. They are doing the Lord's work and Doom 4 needs to be awesome and must happen.

Head over to Bethesda's blog and read up on some memories from iD, the Masters of Doom.

http://www.bethblog.com/2013/12/10/happy-20th-doom/

"Game doesn't work for you? Contact our support (http://www.gog.com/support) and tell us to fix it! But what if they cannot find a solution? If such a rare event should occur, we'll give you your money back. Simple as that. If you buy a game on GOG.com and find that it doesn't work properly on your system, and our support cannot fix the problem, you get a full refund. It's a worldwide guarantee, and you have whole 30 days after the purchase date, to contact us about the refund.

There's even more! If you bought a game by mistake, or simply changed your mind about a purchase, you can get a full refund within 14 days, as long as the game wasn't downloaded."

I mention this because it's an interesting move by GOG.com. Currently most digital stores don't offer refunds and I kind of wish some would. In GOG's case, it would be because they couldn't get your game to run or you bought the wrong game and didn't download it. I laud them for doing this, it goes quite a ways to put a "stamp of quality" on things.

I hope things advance beyond this though. It's 2013 and I can return nearly anything I purchase in a store(except food and whatnot) and online. Digital goods? Not so much. I get that because of copying you could still hold on to it after you return it, but why go through that hassle as pirating it is much simpler. That said, there are cases where I would have loved a refund on my money, most notably when the game I bought isn't very good at all.

When I sink $30-$60 on a game and it for lack of a better term.. sucks, I'd love a refund. Slap on a 30 day window, whatever, I'd just love to get my money back. I know developing games is hard, but in a world with few game demos should a gamer pirate a game before they purchase it?

It's awesome to see GOG.com starting to offer a sane refund policy for goods as the video game industry marches ever digitally I hope others take notice and do so likewise.

"Double Fine Adventure" AKA Broken Age is nearing its first half launch and as the release draws near, they are dropping more info nuggets along the way. One such gem features the vocal stylings of the always amazing Wil Wheaton! I grew up watching Wil Wheaton on Star Trek and it's awesome to see him continue his career past the final frontier.

Broken Age will drop on PC, Mac and Linux in 2014.

"So, there's been a ton of debate recently about the resolution disparities of certain games on PlayStation4 and Xbox One, aka RESOLUTION GATE. And this of course follows a long tradition of gamers and marketers obsessing over next-gen graphics. But after taking a look, we began to wonder do great graphics make for a great game? Sure, graphics allow game designers to do amazing things, but what most gamers truly want is IMMERSION - that feeling of being fully sucked into a game. And when we looked at the psychology of immersion, we found that graphics might not be that important :/. In fact, our obsession with graphics might be holding us back from spreading games into other more artistic avenues. So we had to ask how much do graphics really matter?"

Back when graphics were simple, we had a long way to go to make video games better. Not to say Zork didn't have it's place, but nicer graphics are generally a good thing. Does the difference between 1080p and 720p really matter? Well, sure but not by much.

I played Fallout 3 on the PS3 in glorious 720p, would it have been a better game in 1080p? Certain not, but the experience may have been. I don't mind a bit higher resolution on games, I think it can really make for a great experience. That said, Fallout 3 is still an awesome game in 720p so do super fancy graphics really matter?

I would say that largely no, they don't, but impressive visuals can make a game more effective.